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Tuesday, 25 September 2012

People use foul language every day without a second thought
but in mainstream modern crime fiction there is often very little bad language
and what there is tends to be there to create effect. A character who uses “Oh
no”, “Oh dear” or other such tame expressions can convey the increased
seriousness of a situation by saying “Oh fuck”.

But as a counter balance it has to be inkeeping with the character and their personality.

Expletives have their place in literature as they have their
place in everyday dialogue. Soldiers, emergency forces and certain professions
are rife with foul language and a true depiction of characters in this
environment would have to include the sweary bits.

I have in the past criticised an author for his heavy
dialogue and had to tone my own down. This is not because I am a shrinking
violet. Quite the opposite in fact, I can swear with the best of them. (Especially
once beer has been sampled)

However when writing as with life there are time we all
choose to swear or not swear.

Hit your thumb with a hammer, stubbed your toe or caught
your beloved in the wrong bed? Fine swear all you want.

Lunch with the in-laws, job interviews and first dates are
times when you wouldn’t choose to swear in real life so characters shouldn’t
swear, unless you are making a fool of them. Or arse of them perhaps?

I try to find the balance in my writing as to where
profanity is relevant, character driven and is not there purely for shock
value.

One area I do like to use great big sweary words is when I
have a lengthy piece of dialogue and I want to use the minimum amount of
dialogue tags. Having a curser and a polite character gives a great voice to
each character and defines their speech patterns to create their identity. Hell
you can even have the characters ask the question “Do you have to swear so much?”
to spice things up.

One thing I do draw the line at though is the use of the C
word although I have noticed it is becoming increasingly used both in crime
fiction and TV shows.

Having read many mainstream and successful authors one thing
I have noticed is that very few of the really big sellers litter their books
with Fucks, Bastards or Bloody’s.

Please feel free to comment on your own boundaries and
thoughts on the topic of swearing in books.

In other news I have a story in the forthcoming anthology Off the Record 2. All monies go to charity so grab a copy when it comes out later this week.

I am honoured to have my story included in this anthology for both altruistic and selfish reasons. Altruistic because all the monies raised go the charity.

I’m a short-fuse
reader. There, I’ve admitted it. If I pick up a book looking for slow leisurely
narrative and wonderful detailed descriptions, then that’s fine. But if I pick
up what purports to be a fast-paced page-turner, I expect it to hit the ground
running and I get fed up pretty quickly if it doesn’t live up to my
expectations.

This means I don’t
want to be waylaid by the main characters going through long introductions. I
don’t want to be shown snapshots of them as a child, graphs of their family
tree, and framed copies of their university degrees before we get stuck into
the meat of it. I should be able to glean enough about them as people at this
stage by what they do and say, how they carry themselves.

After all, in fiction
as in life, how people react under pressure defines them, and conflict is what
drives the narrative forwards. Doesn’t matter if it’s physical, emotional or
psychological conflict, as long as you’ve put your characters up a tree and
thrown some kind of rocks at them.

Choosing the right
jumping-in point has always been one of the hardest parts for me when I’m
starting work on a new book. The opening page is never where the story itself starts
― that began way before the body was washed up by the tide, the mysterious
client knocked on the PI’s door. Or, in the case of DIE EASY: Charlie Fox book ten
(due out in October), Charlie finds herself handcuffed to a briefcase on one
side, and Sean on the other, while a running gun battle takes place around her
on a crowded street.

Well, I did mention I
like to hit the ground with a bit of momentum, didn’t I?

Finding the ideal
situation to show off your character to their best advantage is never easy ―
that intersection between the past and the present, at a point where your
character’s motivations, strengths and flaws will be demonstrated to full
effect. The temptation is to concentrate on the story and not how your main
protagonist fits into it. I think this may be one of the reasons that there’s
so often a massive info-dump in the early chapters. It’s tempting to get all
that pesky scene-setting out of the way up front, and then you can get down to
it.

And, I have to
confess, that’s exactly what I felt Stieg
Larsson did in his Millennium trilogy. It took me several attempts to read
the first book because the opening section seemed to be entirely taken up with
a long explanation of how Mikael ‘Kalle’ Blomkvist acquired his nickname. I’m
sure there are plenty of people who can argue the merits of this approach, but
it didn’t really work for me. In the end I practically had to take a run at it.
It was worth the effort, though because once I got past that dollop of back
story, I thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the series. But had that initial book not received such a massive build-up, I
may not have persevered. Can you take that chance with your own work?

I’ve always tried to
drip-feed the back story in relatively slowly, to make the reader interested in
finding out more before I ram it down their throats. I sometimes liken it to
getting onto a bus and sitting down next to someone who immediately starts
telling you their life history. At this point you don’t care, and may even get
off a stop early just to escape. But if they greet you quietly, have something
about the way they observe the other passengers, check out the scenery, when
they do finally start to open up a
little, you’re desperate to know.

Some of the best
advice I was ever given with regard to including back story at the opening of a
novel was to make a second pass through the typescript purely for pace, and see
if you can lose a chapter or two from the beginning.

I tried this out with HARD KNOCKS: Charlie Fox book three.
The book starts with Charlie attending the funeral of one of her old army
comrades, Kirk Salter. There’s a brief flashback detailing how Charlie got the
news of Kirk’s death, but originally that meeting happened in real time and it then
took me a couple of chapters to get to the funeral. Eventually I realised that everybody
would know whose funeral it was because of the information they picked up from
the jacket copy of the book, so why bother including it for real? I was able to
rip up the first two chapters and restart the story from three onwards.

So, I’m a firm
believer in less is more — and leaving out the bits other people skip.
Otherwise it can quickly turn from back
story into holding back the
story.

What about you? Do you
like a lot of scene-setting before you get settled into a book, or do you
prefer to maintain an air of mystery until you’ve got to know the characters a
bit more.

Whichever method you
prefer, happy scribbling and good luck with it!

Zoë Sharp is the author of the bestselling crime
thriller series featuring her ex-Special Forces turned bodyguard heroine,
Charlie Fox. Sharp opted out of mainstream education at the age of twelve and
wrote her first novel at fifteen before becoming a photojournalist in 1988. She
wrote the first of the highly acclaimed Charlie Fox novels after receiving
death-threat letters in the course of her work.

She has been nominated
for Edgar, Anthony, Barry (twice), Benjamin Franklin, and Macavity Awards in
the United States,
as well as the CWA Short Story Dagger. The Charlie Fox series was optioned for
TV by Twentieth Century Fox.

When not welded to her
keyboard, Sharp is a fan of fast cars — and faster motorcycles — sailing,
shooting, house-building, self-defence, and reading just about anything she can
get her hands on. Zoë Sharp blogs regularly on her own website, www.ZoeSharp.com, on the acclaimed group
blog, www.Murderati.com, as well as
wittering on Twitter (@AuthorZoeSharp) and fooling around on Facebook.

DIE EASY: Charlie Fox book ten

In the sweating heat
of Louisiana,
former Special Forces soldier turned bodyguard, Charlie Fox, faces her toughest
challenge yet.

Professionally, she’s
at the top of her game, but her personal life is in ruins. Her lover, bodyguard
Sean Meyer, has woken from a gunshot-induced coma with his memory in tatters.
It seems that piecing back together the relationship they shared is proving
harder for him than relearning the intricacies of the close-protection
business.

Working with Sean
again was never going to be easy for Charlie, either, but a celebrity
fundraising event in aid of still-ravaged areas of New Orleans should have been the ideal
opportunity for them both to take things nice and slow.

Until, that is, they find
themselves thrust into the middle of a war zone.

When an ambitious
robbery explodes into a deadly hostage situation, the motive may be far more
complex than simple greed. Somebody has a major score to settle, and Sean is
part of the reason. Only trouble is, he doesn’t remember why.

And when Charlie finds
herself facing a nightmare from her own past, she realises she can’t rely on
Sean to watch her back. This time, she’s got to fight it out on her own.

Feel free to leave any comments you may have and do yourself a big favour and grab a copy of one of Zoë's books. You won't regret it.

Tuesday, 4 September 2012

As a reviewer for Crimesquad.com I have been watching recent
events unfolding with an ever increasing sense of wonderment and disillusion.
Ever since that fateful panel at The Theakston’s Old Peculiar Crime Writing
Festival in July I have watched as discovery after discovery has been
unearthed.

I like to think that I am not naïve (people who know me will
be the first to attest to my cynical world view) but the amount of underhand
dealings which have taken place lately have taken me by surprise and have led
to no small amount of soul searching with regards to my own position as a
reviewer.

I won’t bore you by repeating wjhat others have said. All I
will do is share my opinions on the situation. First I want to clarify my
position in relation to the names involved in the current storm.

The Investigators

I met Jeremy Duns over dinner at an event at Harrogate two years ago and have his latest book in my
“to be read & reviewed pile”.

I have met Steve Mosby at Harrogate
over the last couple of years and while I have never read any of his books I
have found him to be a decent person and good company.

David Hewson is an author whose work I have read for years
and I have never had any kind of lengthy conversation with him so cannot comment
on his character.

The Villains

I met Stephen Leather at Harrogate
both last year and this year and have enjoyed his company on both occasions.
This year I spoke to him both before and after the panel. I have read his books
for going on twenty years now and I admire him as a writer.

I met Roger Ellory two years ago and had a very brief
conversation. He seemed okay to me and was warm and funny. I haven’t read any
of his books.

John Locke is an author who had never crossed my radar until
the storm about his review purchasing broke.

Sam Millar and Matt Lynn are two authors who I have never
met or heard of until their names surfaced from the mire.

The Victims

Steve Roach is not someone I know in any way shape or form.

Stuart MacBride and Mark Billingham are two people who have
been attacked by Roger (RJ) Ellory and I have met MacBride and Billingham every
year at Harrogate. Both have granted me
interviews and taken the time to talk to me otherwise. Again I read both of
these authors both before and after becoming a reviewer and I plan to read
their next books as well.

Matt Hilton is an author I first met at Harrogate
in 2009 and he has become a friend as he lives fairly local to me and I have
hosted him at my hotel and supported any local events he has participated in. I
have read all his Joe Hunter series.

Stuart Neville is an author who I have heard a lot of good
thing about but never had chance to read.

After reading the many articles on blogs and now the
newspapers I have come up with the following conclusions.

I’m glad my own books only have genuine reviews from people
who have read them.

Reviews are now tainted in the eyes of the public.

Readers are going to stick to authors known to them from
previous works as they may not want to take the chance as they will not trust
reviews on authors who are unknown to them.

Publishers and organisations such as the ITW and CWA can
make all the rules and standards that they want but the unscrupulous authors
out there will either self publish, ePublish or simply stay totally
independent. The people who would follow diktats from the publishing houses and
organisations are those who do not need to be governed.

Writing a good review for your own book isn’t good.
Deliberately attacking others under a pseudonym is definitely bad.

Writing reviews and circulating them to a circle of people
to post for you isn’t good.

Friends and family members posting reviews will happen. If
done from an independent desire to help then this is acceptable.

Offering free copies of your book in any format in exchange
for reviews is acceptable only if the reviewer is allowed to rate the book
honestly.

Buying reviews is low and a discredit to us honest reviewers
who review out of a love for the genre.

Authors who deliberately set out to defame other authors are
wasting their talents & time with infantile behaviour when they could be
writing.

Authors who have been the victims of such malicious
behaviour should receive public apologies from the people who targeted them.

The publishing houses along with Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes
& Nobles, Smashwords etc. should find a way of limiting ways authors can
engage in such behaviour.

Sockpuppets are for entertaining kids, not for online
skulduggery. Grow up and log off.

As I said earlier in this post I have thought long and hard
about my own position as a reviewer. I have always reviewed with an honest eye.
I give my own opinion forward, not one I think they want me to give and if I
have nothing nice to say then I say nothing. My reviews either go to my Crimesquad.com
editor or to Amazon & Goodreads. I don’t submit reviews to both for the
same book.

I plan to carry on with my reviewing but I know from conversations
with other reviewers that I am not the only person who has felt like stopping
reviewing. Personally I believe that to quit because of this storm is akin to
letting the bad boys win.

Harlan Coben is attributed with the most telling quote “I
don’t need others to fail for me to succeed”.